Ripples
by Phoenixflame
Summary: Ripples: A series of concentric rings from a stone thrown into the water. This is the reflection of a future.
1. In Honor of the Fallen

Ripples: In Honor Of The Fallen  
By Phoenixflame  
  
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel: The Series, and all affiliated characters belong to their respective owners (Joss Whedon, etc). Ideas and original characters belong to me.  
  
Wesley told me that no Watchers Journal ever records what happens to the bodies of the Slayers that bit it. Something about demons desecrating the body or something.  
  
It must have been five years ago, one year after she'd died for the last time. Giles was drunk, as he usually is on the aniversary, and I was in town dealing with an infestation of some sort of ugly horned demon that spit acid. We got together in the old Magic Shop, and I helped myself to some of his brandy while he was going on about B. Giles tends to get really wierd when he's drunk. If it weren't for the quality of the brandy, I'd be long gone. I didn't get out of jail just to listen to him whining about B, you know?   
  
So right out of the blue, he says "She'd like it, where I put her. I had to..." He stopped, and swallowed down some more brandy. "...Dig up the body during the night. Willow would have been so... so..." He swallowed down some more. And I shit you not, he was crying his eyes out. He did manage to finish, though. "...So angry, but I think she would have understood. Buffy always love... loved the gardens at the mansion."   
  
He rambled on after that, on and on. I ignored him, cause I was really pissed for a minute. Even dead, I had to fight with the memory of Angel. Not that I don't like the guy. Don't get me wrong, he's done a lot for me, and he moved on and all, but it was a bit too fucking late for B. It's the reason I stay out of the City of Angels on the date of her death.  
  
But I never got to pay my respects, so I left Giles in his cups, and headed out to the mansion.  
  
Nothing has ever taken up lair in the mansion since Angel. Don't know if it's because he did some wierd, male vampire marking of the territory, or if because of the jumbo-sized garden gnome with the sword sticking in it. Either way, I'm surprised I didn't think of it before for B.   
  
Giles hadn't planted roses or lilies, or anything stupid and sentimental like that. Out in the middle of the night-blooming jasmine, and the wild roses, was a marker, underneath a statue of an angel. It said: "Buffy Summers. Warrior, Friend, and Savior." I kid you not.   
  
I figured I should bring something to show my respects, so I grabbed some flowers from the garden, and put them down on the marker, and just stood staring there, down at the stone.  
  
We were slayers. Sister slayers, side by side. She had friends, sure, but what we had goes deeper than blood, deeper than anything they can imagine. Slayers. Shit, we drank from the same cup, fought the same monsters, and understood each other in a way that sometimes really scared the shit out of me.  
  
And now she's in the ground, dead. I'm not going to be stupid and say it's cause of me, but I felt pretty shitty. Here this beautiful girl who I fought side by side with is under the ground, because some fucking spawn of hell got the best of her. She's dead, and all I could think of was how much I missed her.   
  
And the other thing? Hell, I'll never tell you. Some things are best left in the ground. But every year, I visit the mansion, and leave flowers on the marker.   
  
B would have laughed at me. But I don't care. 


	2. Angles of Fallen Stars

Ripples: Angles of Falling Stars  
By Phoenixflame  
  
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel: The Series, and all affiliated characters belong to their respective owners (Joss Whedon, etc). Ideas and original characters belong to me.  
  
  
He worries about her, she knows. She usually ignores him, though, sitting at the window, tracing patterns on the glass, watching the children play outside. Two or three of them. Every time she gets into bed with him, it seems, she gets pregnant again.   
  
Here behind the white picket fence, she fixes meals for the children and sends them off to school, patches up boo-boos, and sings them to sleep. He's not home for it, he's off saving the world, and so he does not know that the children grow up with songs in long forgotten tongues in their heads, and a love for the extraordinary that no one can wipe away. One will be a witch, and Willow watches, smiling softly as the fourteen year old steals books from the magic shop, and lights incense, and dances beneath the moon.  
  
They do not know that she traces patterns in the dirt of her garden, or that she has kept rosemary by the garden gate, marigold for the ointments she smears on their wounds, they do not yet know that the aloe in the bathroom is mixed with it, and they do not know that she has planted nightshade in the darkest corner of the yard, or that she knows thousands of ways to kill by magic. They do not know that their mother could have been an Adept.   
  
Then she fell from such heights. A falling star, lighting up the sky, blazing across it. Fire in the heavens, the wind in her hair, and ancient magic dripping from her fingertips. She knows the blackest of magic, magic that can twist the soul, call up fiends from Hell, magic to bind souls.   
  
They do not know why her husband watches her, or what he says to her when the door of their bedroom closes. They do not know why she used to get up to sing at dawn.  
  
But the daughter watches, and learns, and smiles quietly. And Willow smiles back, grateful that at least one of them will escape the stifling normality. By the time her little Rose blooms, she will be far away from Xander and Sunnydale.   
  
And the world will never be the same. 


End file.
